Slashdot videos: Now with more Slashdot!

View

Discuss

Share

We've improved Slashdot's video section; now you can view our video interviews, product close-ups and site visits with all the usual Slashdot options to comment, share, etc. No more walled garden! It's a work in progress -- we hope you'll check it out (Learn more about the recent updates).

omlx writes "KDE SC 4.5 is in feature freeze right now. Therefore, I decided to share some early screenshots with you. In general there are no major changes; it's all about polishing and fixing bugs. There are a lot of under-the-hood changes in libs, which as end users we cannot see. KDE SC will be released in August 2010." Note: you can also try out a beta of the release now, if you'd like.

No, I run dual monitors and agree with the GP. Multi-monitor support in KDE 4.x is pretty weak compared to 3.5. For example, there's no way to have a plasmoid (the one that replaces kicker in particular) span two monitors, and there's no way to have a background wallpaper span both monitors, you can only clone from one to the other (or set them separately, but that makes the slideshow feature useless). Both of those features worked beautifully in 3.5, but are nonexistent in 4.x. Before you ask, I've already filed bug [kde.org] reports [kde.org].

2 monitors may work. But not 3. I have an accelerated triple head setup with KDE 3.5.10. This configuration will not work with KDE 4 because KDE 4 doesn't support two instances of KDE running in a single X server. KDE 3.5.10 does.

You'd think with all the GUI work done by Apple, Microsoft, even Google, and other folks one might expect the KInfoCenter right column would have an one icon for the CPU [single slot systems] and a clean list of # of Cores, Extensions, etc and not an Icon for each Core. If you have multiple slots and thus say, 2 Quad Core CPUs then fine, put two icons. The rounded rectangle Border is hideous and how they can't get and inset look boggle the imagination.

I'm on 4.4 now. I switched from kde 3.5 yesterday on this laptop. Its just as fast and just as useful. I am quite happy with it. However as someone who was using 3.5 till yesterday, why do you need them to give it back to you? Can't you just install it?;)

I don't really think that's possible right now. Win7 set a pretty high standard for usability, and the independent-packages model can't seem to keep up with them. For example, how do you set up a laptop with Linux to remember the external screens it was connected to, their resolutions and main screen status? It's automatic on 7, and the initial setup is literally 3-4 mouse clicks.

Linux may be fine for servers, but Xorg needs to die before I touch it again.

I'm glad you pointed this out. I wasn't aware that KDevelop 4 had finally been released, and I'll have to go have a look at it. I was beginning to think that it, DNF, and OSSTMM3 were in competition for last release date.

Generally I like the KDE look and feel, but those folder icons look a little odd--almost disproportionate. And I realize it's abstract, but what is that default background? Looks like a beam of light is shooting out a bunch of photons, but only along the curved paths.
I do like the hover effect on the folders, and generally the whole thing looks pretty clean.

...I still (still!) have a bad taste in my mouth from that horrible trainwreck of a 4.0 release, and how Aaron Seigo and other KDE devs defended the release strategy. And still do to this day! I think that debacle really hurt the KDE project in the longterm. Big software projects like google-chrome still aren't flocking to QT and KDE.

It's a fairly nice desktop environment, but it's obvious that the focus (for the desktop user experience at least) has always been eye-candy first and stability later. I understand they needed the lay down the framework initially, but shouldn't that framework have at least been somewhat stable before worrying about all the translucent crap and literal bells and whistles? Plasma is still prone to crashing last I checked (4.4). I know, I know... different contributors want to work on different things, and many prefer to work on the eye-candy junk. But to me that just points out how terrible the KDE project has been in managing and organizing KDE4.

And this "SC" crap? Who possibly thought that was needed, or was even remotely a good idea?

I like KDE 4.4 (which is what I'm using now) -- I like it a lot -- but I'm right there with you about the bad taste in my mouth. The way they handled 4.0 was stupid and they deserved all the crap they got for it and more.

4.4 is a completely different beast and I mostly love the featureset. However, based on my experience with 4.0 I'm a little afraid of 5.0.

Look, fine so it was a bit unpolished, but it's much more polished now. I have a feeling that it wouldn't be where it is now if they hadn't had the exposure they had, or if people hadn't gone on long rants on blogs on what they thought should change. Those comments helped get us to where we are now.

Sure, they probably could have been clearer in the communication, but I distinctly remember they saying that this was a "beta" release in many ways, and they just want

Yeah, I have been staring at a lot of these posts and have been thinking roughly the same thing. I am not a KDE user, but I am sympathetic to there having to be breakages every once in a while to stop atrophy. Windows has it. Mac OS has it. Gnome has it. KDE has it.

I don't think there needs to be a KDE5, at least not in the way there was KDE4. The differences between Qt3 and Qt4 were huge, and more or less demanded a huge rewrite. Since then Trolltech/Nokia has been extending it for many years, and while I suspect some things will be depreciated in Qt5 I haven't seen any signs of it needing the same kind of overhaul. When and if Qt5 comes - which there's no hint of yet - I think most of Qt4 will live on which means KDE won't need to rewrite much either. And of course

The biggest problem with 4.0 was that it was a developer release. RedHat etc should have done more internal testing an shipped with kde 3.5 as default (as Slackware did). By 4.2 is was half decent. 4.4 is great and quite an improvement over 4.3.

And Windows 7 was mostly polished on release, and has received a very good reception. Which example should software projects follow?

If the KDE team wanted to temper down expectations on the release of KDE4.0, then they shouldn't have had a big google release party and been extolling KDE4's virtues for months before. Yes, we're still talking about the 4.0 release, because frankly, it took the KDE team a long time to limp to a somewhat usable 4.2.

What? Windows 7 (Windows NT 6.1) is very good, but it followed up on Vista (Windows NT 6.0), which was received with ridicule and loud complaints after years of hype and abandoned technologies (WinFS, etc). Vista was released early 2007, Windows 7 was released October 2009. KDE 4.0 was released January 2008. If KDE 4 were to have its "Windows 7 moment", it would be right about now. Well, if the KDE project had Microsoft's resources, that is.

Then there's a simple solution. If it's blatantly obvious that your software project won't be stable for day-to-day use for at least 6 months or more (as was the case with KDE4.0), then classify it as a beta. Don't tarnish the brand itself (as both MS and KDE did).

Evidently that doesn't hold true, as you just held Windows 7 as a shining example of doing something right, Vista all but forgotten. People are still harping on about KDE 4.0 whereas OS X 10.0 was forgotten with 10.2, Windows Vista with Windows 7, Gnome 2.0 (oh boy was that a disappointment!) sometime around 2.6 or so (and they still haven't fixed the file selector). There are more examples of poor.0 releases than good ones, but KDE 4.0 still gets more complaints than any other release, even though KDE evi

Wrong. Windows Vista was crap, and everyone hated it so much they went back to XP, and demanded the distributors sell them XP instead of Vista.
Windows Vista Redux (aka Windows 7) fixed all the problems and now people aren't complaining.

Then Vista is an example of how major software releases should not be handled. Same for KDE4.0.

He's absolutely right. At the end of the day, the KDE 4.x series moved as quickly as it did, probably because of broad user feedback. nothing beats good quality user feedback, or having people rant on their blogs about how software X should have feature Y etc.

And look, they weren't exactly unclear about it - they stated fairly openly that it was a beta-ish release, and they were trying to get user feedback. It's an open-source project, release early, release often.

Put it this way, if you can install KDE/Linux, I'm sure you can put up with a bit of quirkiness in your desktop manager, or file a bug report.

(Actually, ironically, I've worked with a lot of non-technical users, and for some things, they seem to just ignore/accept changes, weirdly enough - they just assume it's part of the "magic" of this black box. Weird but true).

He's absolutely right. At the end of the day, the KDE 4.x series moved as quickly as it did, probably because of broad user feedback. nothing beats good quality user feedback, or having people rant on their blogs about how software X should have feature Y etc.

Which is why naming it "beta" would have been just fine. Frankly, I don't think the KDE team were very receptive to user feedback after 4.0; I think the wave of harsh criticism and trolling caused them to be a little more inflexible about their version of the "new paradigm".

And look, they weren't exactly unclear about it - they stated fairly openly that it was a beta-ish release, and they were trying to get user feedback. It's an open-source project, release early, release often.

From what I recall, the vast majority of the beta-ish, eat-your-children talk was made after the initial release, while facing a storm of criticism. I remember there being lots of hype prior to the release. I also remember the concern

Oh dear, OS X 10.0 was at least usable, and it replaced an aging OS that needed replacing. KDE 4.0 was unusable, unstable, immature, and about as configurable as my alarm clock, and replaced a simple and better desktop that did not need any replacement.

It was a memory hog like nothing seen before it, exceptionally slow, and full of bugs. It was certainly a lot less usable than OS 9 at the time (or any other major desktop OS, including Linux and BeOS), and Apple got the same complaints that KDE got: this should have been marked 'beta'. The response was that they needed testing and feedback, just like KDE. Apple: good guys taking your money. KDE: bad guys giving you things for free.

The Plasma desktop doesn't crash for me. Maybe you need to check with your package maintainers about that. But you know what? The bitterness about 4.0 comes up in every single goddamned KDE thread. But it just doesn't matter any more. Seriously. KDE 4.4 is stable enough, and it looks like 4.5 is going to be even better.
It's okay. You can let go.

You get emotional about software you didn't even write? Honestly, take a good hard look at your life.

When your business or hobby relies on it, what do you expect|? And honestly if the same people are in charge, how can anyone let it go? There's every chance they'll do something equally daft in the near future.

I noticed that too. Why are we blaming the Devs for this though? I didnt see it as an option in my distro (Debian) until it was useful (4.2?). I seriously doubt anyone built it from source and then were annoyed. It would seem to me that the distro makers should take the rap for this one.

Google Chrome is your example of "big software projects still not flocking to Qt"?It's a separate thing from KDE, and a great toolkit. Chrome was mostly ill thought out as a single platform app initially, and afterwards - perhaps the team was more used to Gtk+; or they convinced themselves that Qt makes sense "only" when it would be used across all platforms (and with huge work done already on Win version...)

Supposedly Opera uses "now" (still in beta version, as far as current one for Linux goes; they concentrated on Win probably due to browser ballot) both gtk+ and Qt, depeding where it runs, in the place where Qt was exclusive previously; something like that.

And IIRC their general UI/etc. has some common roots; I seem to remember they were basically across the street from Trolltech, took Qt as a starting point and refined it over the years for their needs...something like that.

Granted, but it does seem both amusing and frustrating as a user to find that KHTML has now become Webkit, which is now used in Chrome, with gtk instead of qt -- but Chrome is faster in every way than Konqueror, including launching faster, even on KDE.

So while I'd love to port it -- after all, the crown jewels of Chrome are WebKit and V8, neither of which is GTK-specific -- I don't know that it'd buy much.

It's a fairly nice desktop environment, but it's obvious that the focus (for the desktop user experience at least) has always been eye-candy first and stability later.

And usability never. KDE 4.x is a dog's dinner of a user interface. There is too much going on, too many esoteric buttons & settings all mixed with the common ones. The control panel is particularly atrocious with a pseudo-Mac like front end giving way to dialogs with tabs with more dialogs with tabs and even trees of dialogs of tabs wit

...I still (still!) have a bad taste in my mouth from that horrible trainwreck of a 4.0 release, and how Aaron Seigo and other KDE devs defended the release strategy. And still do to this day!

Because it was correct. It was no different to any other.0 release for any other piece of open source software. Unfortunately, distributors simply have no idea what to put into their distributions other than to compile the latest release and then bitch and moan about it. That's probably why desktop Linux has failed r

I already understood what they were trying to accomplish with their silly renaming... and gawd, that convoluted explanation only makes it worse. Why is the KDE team spending so much time creating arbitrary new naming conventions? No one cares. IMO it comes off as pompous. Similar to when they were insisting that a.0 release signifies extreme beta or alpha quality software.

Will this version finally handly dual monitors? I keep having to use Gnome , which also handles them badly, but it's not as braindead as KDE. They have the app that is supposed to configure it, but it never works. For me it doesn't seem to remember the settings. I've filed a bug many versions ago, supplied files they asked for, and it remains b0rked (as of whatever version comes with latest Ubuntu). Am I the only one that uses two monitors under Linux, or do I just happen to have the two monitors that don't

Unpredictable results when moving from two displays to one and back to two again (i.e. ejecting from a dock with a second display). Constant reconfiguration of the panel and displays every time I log in. Sometimes no panel appears. Sometimes multiples on a single screen. Now you log in with one screen and it thinks you have two and the panels are on the "other" one (that isn't connected) and this desktop is simply bare, so that you have to start a Konsole, reconfigure everything all over agai

I learned C on a Sun 3/50 running SunOS loaded from DC6150 tapes. I installed Linux for the first time in '93 and still have boxes of floppies containing every Slackware release up to 4.0.

I started using KDE with beta3, before 1.0, and didn't stop until 3.5.

Don't give me this "go back go Windows" shit.

Saying "it works for me, therefore there are no bugs" is precisely the sort of half-ass response that has been holding Linux adoption back for a decade.

Look around you. Every time there is a KDE4 story, there are posts here complaining about it.

Filing bug reports is fine, but some of us have real work to do, and draw the line at filing more than one or two bug reports a month. More than that = switch to another platform.

Funny that GNOME seems to be able to manage multiple monitors in a predictable fashion, while on KDE4 every other reboot, dock, or undock leads to the loss of desktop state in one way or another, requiring reconfiguration or just a total removal of KDE dotfiles and starting over from scratch (which can be much faster).

KDE4 chased away a lot of longtime KDE users. They're not coming back so long as GNOME works better. Call us names if you want. I don't care, I have no vested interest in using KDE. I also have no vested interest in using GNOME and it looks like I will be switching to XFCE with the GNOME 3.0 release because it's looking not-so-good. My time is too valuable to spend it "trying to make XYZ work," whether XYZ is KDE, GNOME, or anything else.

If it isn't bulletproof obvious at the first go, it's a fail. This isn't 1995 any longer. This is 2010, and there are plenty of examples of spectacular and spectacularly usable user interfaces around that require zero maintenance or "figuring out" by their users.

The Linux desktop world is starting to feel like a place where TWM is once again top-of-the-heap.

I've never been able to configure dual screens via KDE's own utils. For the Multiple Monitors system settings module to become active at all, I have to have set up Xinerama already, either through xorg.conf or by using Nvidia's own handy-dandy nvidia-settings GUI tool. (However, I vastly prefer TwinView to Xinerama -- which sort of does the same (one desktop, dual screens), only with Kwin's compositing enabled. (Compositing doesn't survive turning off the second screen on the fly, though. Don't know why tha

I don't remember ever having much luck with monitor configuration in KDE3. Last time I ran KDE 4.x on dual monitors (KDE 4.2.2 on Slackware 13 IIRC) it worked with out any hassle (only configuring I had to do was say which was left and right).

Are you suggesting developers don't use dual screen setups, that it's only for gamers/windows users, and that in general linux users only use a single monitor?

At least that's what I got out your post, and let me tell you, you are so wrong. I'm a developer, a linux user, and I have two screens. I don't many other people who use two screens, but those who do mostly also run linux...

My apps show up in the tray just fine. My desktop icons don't have windows around them, unless I make the folder view small to group them or something similarly silly. One of KDE's advantages has always been configurability, have you even tried to configure it?

Ubuantu and apple should have taught you that no, most don't want to configure anything, they don't want to customize, they don't want to have a choice (kde or gnome or xcfe etc). They just want you to tell them what to click on.

I had been using kde since 1.x. Like many other long-time kde users, I can't stand kde-4.x so I've been looking for a kde-3.5 replacement. The best replacement, by far, that I could find was the ancient (but still maintained) Enlightenment e16. It's taken a little while to learn and configure but I'm actually happier with e16 than I was with kde-3.5. After a day or two of tinkering I made it my default desktop and never felt the urge to go back to kde-3.5.

I upgraded my office workstation to KDE 4, but the thing holding me back on my home PC is the state of Amarok 2.x. I have an iPod Classic--a gift from my brother--and Amarok 2.x has a distinctly crippled feature set vis-a-vis v1.4. "Various Artists" does not group in a similar way--most are scattered about in single file albums. Worse, podcasts cannot be copied to my iPod. At one point I was able to use a Gnome tool for this, but that is no longer working for me, either.
I have a hard time understanding

I ran Linux on the desktop for many years - full-time since 2003/4. I've actually - possibly temporarily, possibly permanently - moved to Windows, namely Windows 7.

I used to love KDE. Everything worked nicely, everything felt well-placed. The system made sense. KDE3.5 was pretty much my ideal desktop - I may have become used to different things since then, but at the time - it felt perfect. It was quick, nimble, stable, reliable, packed with decent features. But my main appeal... Amarok. It didn't start out this way, but Amarok 1.4 was a damned good player.

What happened? KDE4 was buggy. It was lacking. It was cosmetically challenged. As the releases went on, things did improve - but I still find I have less features and less usability now than I did in 2007. Even now(at least when I checked a couple of months ago) - why can't I set the clock from the taskbar to sync with an nntp server? How hard can they make it for me to mess with multiple monitors? Why make it so hard for me to put some files on my desktop? Having to manually deactivate all the sounds apart from the one or two I actually _want_?

It is still _my_ desktop, right?

Amarok... needs little discussion. The crux of it for me is I liked the earlier interface. It made sense. It's now completely different, almost catching up in terms of features, but I hate the layout. All I wanted was a list of albums on the left, double click to add albums to the list of stuff playing on the right. Let me move the buttons. I don't care for lyrics, nor the artwork, nor buying music from whatever place they've added as a default. I just want the damned UI that made much more sense than anything else at the time.

I miss Linux. It's rock-stable for me, easy to keep up to date. It's widely configurable, has pretty decent hardware support these days. I like being able to try a new distro on occasion.

But I'm still stuck on the desktop. KDE3.5 is going nowhere. KDE4 spent years as a beta, rolled out with deceitful version numbers indicating it should be good. Even as of 4.4, whilst much improved over the abomonation that was 4.0, it's feeling buggy and incomplete.

I lost interest in Gnome years ago. KDE offered - to me at least - a better experience. I couldn't go back to Gnome, having decided all those years ago that KDE had much more going for it.

What now? I've got Win7 running. I've installed Firefox, Thunderbird, Foobar2000(brilliant!!) and VLC. I genuinely have less criticism for this than I've had for KDE for a long time now. To the point where I'm actually giving serious thought to paying for it. (Yes, I know that's bad - but it really has only been installed for ~10 days. After all these years without touching anything MS, I had no idea whether I'd even still be able to navigate the OS properly.)

Way to go, KDE. Way to go, Amarok. I spent years singing your praises, converting people(not many, but a good handful) from the mundane. Now I've pretty much lost interest in you for the forseeable future...

why can't I set the clock from the taskbar to sync with an nntp server

I'm assuming you mean an NTP server, not a USENET news server (NNTP).

Have you ever been able to do this anyway? You can't set the time on a Linux system without root, and ntpd usually runs as a system daemon anyway. It doesn't make much sense on the taskbar clock applet. This kind of stuff belongs in the distro-specific control panel / customizations, since different distros configure ntpd in different ways.

'scuse me... on my Hardy Heron KDE desktop, right click on the clock in the panel, a dialog appears, click on the "adjust date & time" option, a window comes up asking for password and then on succesfull verification, you are in the KDE control module for date & time where you can specify an ntp server to automatically adjust time with... that's what he wants with the clock in KDE 4.x... it doesn't allow him that freedom... it's gone backwards in functionality...

'scuse me... on my Hardy Heron KDE desktop, right click on the clock in the panel, a dialog appears, click on the "adjust date & time" option, a window comes up asking for password and then on succesfull verification, you are in the KDE control module for date & time where you can specify an ntp server to automatically adjust time with... that's what he wants with the clock in KDE 4.x... it doesn't allow him that freedom... it's gone backwards in functionality...

Say what?

Slackware 13.1 w/KDE 4.4.3 here and I can do the exact same thing.

Maybe if these anti KDE / pro GNOME distro's stopped trying to kill KDE and actually gave the users the full experience you might have something different to say about it.

As for stability this KDE session has been running since May 12, today is the 27th, so 15 days of up time for KDE itself is pretty good.

When KDE4 came out I used it for several months before finally giving up due to severe bugs that made it almost unusable.

Since then I keep trying it under the assumption that they've had time to fix the bugs- but it seems they just keep adding on more unusable features instead of stopping and cleaning up what they've already got.

Oh gods, when will they realize it's not the most hip and fashionable Photoshop filters that make a good desktop experience. Drop shadows can be a good thing for depth perception with windows and panels, but drop shadows and highlights and glow filters everywhere, rounded corners like it's a an IKEA catalog and soon to be that copied-to-death reflection effect everywhere - that does not make a computer desktop. They have 10 graphic designer per 1 programmer probably. Figures, it's one thing sliding sliders

Well, you are wrong. But perhaps KDE just isn't for you. You're free to use something else. Or you can spend some time and set up KDE4 to work exactly the way you want. It's very flexible, compared to all the others, even if you don't use the analog clock (I don't).

KDE4 to work exactly the way you want. It's very flexible, compared to all the others

Except KDE 3.5. KDE4.x was all about making KDE look pretty instead of making it more customizable i.e. useful like KDE3.5.x is. If I wanted a D.E. that abandoned customization as a virtue I'd use Gnome.

I've done plenty of real work in KDE 4.x, efficiently, which is hard proof that you're wrong. It's fairly easy to use by default, on all distros I've tried it on (Arch, Debian, Fedora, Kubuntu), so I can only assume you're severely mentally challenged.

Going back to Windows afterwards is just painful *sigh*. Even something as simple as split views and tabs in Dolphin is so much better. Urgh. Why can't Windows implement that =). Heck, even Putty doesn't have tabs...haha...

Also, it's "dual".

I have to agree with an earlier poster though, some things like dual-monitor setups on Windows are just easier - they Just Work. So features, yeah, KDE, but polish, Windows. Just my 2c.

What do you actually mean when you say it is inefficient? Does it consume more power? Does it somehow take more time to do things? The statement makes no sense to me -- I use KDE every day and find it a pleasure to work with (kubuntu, at that -- which I hear is among the 'worst' of the KDE distros).

Exactly right. The only KDE I can still stand to use is KDE 3.5 and I pretty much don't even use that anymore. And then you have GNOME in all its GTK crippled, Mono infected crappiness. As far as I'm concerned Linux has ceased to be a viable desktop. I had hopes for it for so long... all dashed. Macports FTW.

It would appear Android is about the only viable avenue left for Linux world domination in anything beyond servers and developer tools.

Now that KDE is also breaking things left and right in the search for their mythical holy grail, many of those same people don't know where to switch.

Me, I was fine with Gnome 2.x, but then I saw the screenshots of the mess that will be "Gnome Shell" in v3, and figured that I don't want to wait for that rug to be pulled from under me. So XFCE it is, for now, and hopefully for a while.

I used KDE a lot, then GNOME and KDE (before 4.x) in parallel (two machines), now GNOME only, with several XFCE components (thunar, Terminal).To be honest, it really doesn't matter that much. I guess I'm DE-apathetic. As long as it is consistent.

I gave up trying to use KDE 4 from 4.4.x onwards. Its a huge pile of mess- especially the forced bundling of Nepomuk and Akonadi. Akonadi turned KDEPIM (a better PIM than Evolution) a big turd with countless memory/CPU hogging daemons flying all over the place. I saw a very sharp increase in CPU & memory usage because of Akonadi from KDE 4.4 onwards. And yes, plasma crashes...still, this is on the supposedly great KDE distros like Opensuse and Mandriva, not Kubuntu. A PIM is very important for me as I u

It's funny, you know, I always hated KDE 3.5, it was so completely quirky with plenty of odd features just tacked on wherever and however it was possible. It was cluttered, messy, and configuration was a nightmare - at least that's my experience from the limited exposure I got.

KDE 4.x on the other hand is very clean and straightforward. Sure I have to tweak some settings and shortcuts, but it's all very simple and I don't have to spend days just to get it do what I want.

Define worse than ever. I switched from kde 3.5 to 4.4 yesterday on the laptop. I have had no problems at all. It works just as fast if not faster, and so far is just as stable (My uptimes with kde3.5 was over 30days). All the apps are snappy to start and this is on a 2 year old lower end laptop.

As a GNOME user, I don't like this at all, and I have no idea why anyone would want to use KDE. I can't stand a desktop environment where I'm able to choose how to configure it, or worse, where others can configure their desktops differently from mine. That's why I like GNOME: it removes all these confusing options, and just gives me the minimum. Desktops need to be as simple as possible, so that users like me aren't confused, and extra options goes against this. KDE is just too complicated, and I can't understand it.

It isn't about being "confused" or somehow not smart enough to use KDE. It's about lacking the time/patience to make a bunch of crappy, poorly thought-out software bearable by spending an inordinate amount of time in baroque Options dialogues for every new program they open.

Criticism on the KDE message boards is, for the most part, deleted by admins, so we have to go to other websites to vent and discuss why we don't like what the batty KDE devs are doing.

Interesting... I don't recall doing anything of the sort, nor anyone else of the administration/moderation staff. We only ask users to uphold the Code of Conduct. We don't delete messages if we disagree with them.

This is blatantly false. I'm one of the three KDE Community Forums administrators and we have never deleted messages just because we disagreed with them. In fact, we have even rarely locked threads. The only people that got reprimanded were the ones that violated the KDE Community Code of Conduct, which all forum members agree to uphold when they register.